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Get Students to Respond it is great for students to be engaged in reading activities. Writing about reading has been shown to have positive effects in studies. Therefore, we must ask children to read responses frequently. Those responses, however, do not always have to be official. Let’s look at some techniques to get students to write creatively in reading responses.
01 – Get Students to Respond Booksnaps
Booksnaps aren’t like other types of writing assignments. In essence, students take a picture of a page they are reading and reflecting on. Students demonstrate how they think about what they are reading in the writing section by using emojis, words, symbols, hashtags, and other means.
Many book snaps are designed to assist kids in making connections and thinking more deeply, but I’ve seen them utilized for other purposes. When a student looks back on a book snap a year or two after reading a text, the student should be able to recall what they read on that page and why they reacted the way they did.
02 – One-Pagers
Get Students to Respond use one-pagers to represent as much of their knowledge as possible on (as the name implies) one blank page. They bring together drawings, colors, quotes, and comments in a cohesive way. Students usually choose an overarching topic and symbol to tie their words together.
If you’ve never made a one-pager before, it can be frightening. Last year, I experimented with various scaffolding strategies to see what kids required to complete them successfully. I felt that presenting a menu of options for what to include was helpful in this process. Students also valued specific brainstorming questions, recommendations, and plenty of space.
03 – Writing Prompts
Journaling about reading can be enjoyable if you use the correct prompts. During choice reading units, I use diary prompts to check in with my students. They show me how students think about their books and whether or not they can use textual evidence to help them frame their responses.
We don’t need to grade writing prompts all the time, but we need something quick and simple when we do. We don’t want to spend hours marking them because they aren’t essays. We’ve discovered one approach to include a short rubric at the bottom of the page so that students understand the expectations, and grading is simple. Another easy tip is to create a shared comment bank from which you may copy and paste. When you are focused on a certain notion, there’s no point in reinventing the wheel!
04 – GRAPHIC Organizers
Students can utilize visual organizers to help them focus on specific abilities while reading. For example, if we want kids to improve their comprehension, we can give them graphic organizers that push them to consider summarizing, inferring, visualizing, cause and effect, and more!
Scaffolding difficult or multi-step standards with graphic organizers are also a good idea. Students must first investigate what characters are saying and the story’s tone to analyze how speech affects suspense and action in a report.
